Sep

Opening Remarks: General Sassiness

The first week of classes is officially over! And your professors have made some stand-out, hilarious, and in some cases genuinely frightening comments. Bask in the glory that is Columbia faculty insanity below.

Anthony Donaghue, Statistics: “I know I come across as a nice guy, but don’t let that fool you. I’ve seen enough students pass by me to know when someone is playing some sort of game. So if you play a game with me, you won’t win.”

Rashid Khalidi, History of the Modern Middle East: “Welcome to the fetid, steaming, humid atmosphere of New York City in the late summer.”

Deborah Steiner, Augustan Poetry, in a cute British accent: “While I’m on my dinosaur-like views of technology…please don’t walk out of the room during class. I always feel like I’ve said something rather offensive!”

James Shapiro, Shakespeare I: “If you wanna pop a Ritalin here, it doesn’t matter to me at all.”

Shamus Khan, The Social World: “I mean this in the nicest possible way but I don’t really care about you.”

Timothy Mitchell, Rethinking Middle East Politics: “Thomas Friedman has been writing the same things this summer, if you follow his columns in the New York Times, and I’m not suggesting you should or would want to.”

Noam Elcott, Art History Major’s Colloquium: “Don’t be one of those people knocking on the department door and crying because you’re late. It’s pathetic.”

Stephen Murray, Art Hum: “All I can say about the Core is that it’s a jolly good time!”

Anonymous CC professor: “We live in a very different world today, but I think that the idea remains the same. And it is still a very good idea: We force you to read useless books.”

From the Intensive General Chem course: “From these derivations, you can clearly see that size, does indeed, matter.”

Anonymous Lit Hum professor: “I want us to become one with the warriors.” He also advises us to “sing The Iliad to yourselves. Out loud.”

Prof. John Kender, Intro to CS: “What are some other important programming languages?”
Student: “JavaScript!”
Prof. Kender [cringes for a few seconds]: “Come on, guys, real programming languages. This isn’t middle school.”

Dr. Ivana Hughes [after being asked who her husband is]: “I promise I will never take my clothes off.”

Xavier Sala-I-Martin: “There is a statistical phenomenon of many, many grandmothers dying on the day of the midterm.”